J13 
py 1 



THE UNITED STATES AND THE 
ABORTIVE ARMED NEUTRALITY 

OF I 794 



^ 



SAMUEL FLAGG BEMIS 



REPRINTED FROM THE 



VOL. XXIV., NO. I OCTOBER, u,i8 



iS4f 



THE UNITED STATES AND THE ABORTIVE ARMED 
NEUTRALITY OF 1794 



[Reprinttd from The American Historical Review, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, July, 1918.] 



THE UNITED STATES AND THE ABORTIVE ARMED 
NEUTRALITY OF 17^4 

Aside from the great issues between the belhgerents, nothing has 
been more strongly forced upon international attention by the pres- 
ent war than the increasingly difficult position in which neutral 
states find themselves between the two groups of antagonists reeling 
at grips across the face of the world. Economic, national, and im- 
perial interests have impelled the great belligerents to form their 
own systems for the preservation of their lives ; only when a neutral 
is able to present power behind its behests are the mighty combatants 
of world wars likely to depart enough from their own considerations 
to give heed to its demands. The history of American neutrality 
from 1914 to 1917 will remain one of the greatest illustrations of 
this fact. 

On two familiar occasions in the past, neutral nations who have 
seen their interests injured and unheeded by belligerents in world 
wars have adopted a joint defense by threat of armed force as a 
means of obtaining what they deemed their rights, short of actually 
entering war. Such a combination has been successful according 
to the degree of force' that has been behind it, and according to the 
degree in which the interests of the united neutrals have coincided. 

In the First Armed Neutrality, of 1780-1783, to which the 
United States was a party, the alliance of neutrals to enforce en- 
lightened principles of international law was sufficiently numerous, 
sufficiently unified in interests, and sufficiently strong to force Great 
Britain to much greater prudence, and to a mitigation of the severity 
of her prize laws.^ It constituted one element in the forces bal- 
ancing against the United Kingdom that induced British statesmen 
to come to terms with America.- The Second Armed Neutrality, of 
1800, including Sweden, Denmark, Russia, and Prussia, was not 
strong enough to prevent the collapse of Denmark under the guns 
of Nelson. .Skillful British diplomacy playing on the divergent in- 
terests of the neutral allies, the bombardment of Copenhagen, and 
the death of the Tsar Paul, shattered that neutral combination before 
it attained sufficient momentum to influence materially the naval 
policy of Great Britain. 

1 Kleeti, Lois et Usages de la Neiitralite, I. 20 et seq. 

2 Van Tyne, American Revolution, p. 32S. 

(26) 



"h^^ 






The Armed Neutrality of i/p4 27 

Not much mention has ever been made of the beginnings of 
another armed neutrahty that threatened British naval control in a 
manner equally dangerous, in the year 1794. It is interesting to 
students of American history, because the relation of the United 
States to it shows how the action of small belligerents in the face 
of all-powerful opponents is dictated thoroughly by the interests of 
self-preservation, just as deviations from accepted principles of 
international law on the part of great belligerents are frequently 
dictated — and always explained — by the same motives. It is inter- 
esting, again, because the decision then taken by the government of 
the United States to abstain from such an alliance, and to acquiesce 
in the principal British interpretations of sea law, marks the first 
conscious and official embarkation on a policy which remained the 
pole-star of American foreign relations until the vastly altered con- 
ditions of 1917 — the policy of abstention from entangling alliances. 

Great Britain's entrance, in February, 1793, into the European 
conflagration precipitated by the French Revolution, extended that 
great conflict of political antagonisms beyond the marches and 
countermarches of Continental armies. Republican legions of 
France successfully met the threat of Pillnitz and the manifesto of 
the Duke of Brunswick, but the regenerated vigor of revolutionary 
warfare found indomitable opposition in the British sea power and 
the controlling diplomacy that worked hand in hand with it. To 
sweep the tricolor from the seas, and by choking the commerce of 
France so to impede the effectiveness of her armies as to force 
them to yield to those of the Coalition, was the policy of Great 
Britain. With the development of this maritime policy neutral 
nations saw themselves seriously injured by the increasingly arbi- 
trary Orders in Council and the wholly one-sided decisions of the 
admiralty courts. Great Britain did not propose for one minute 
that the protection of a neutral flag should nullify her naval might. 

Though strong, British sea power was not at the beginning of 
the war omnipotent. The diplomacy of Downing Street was there- 
fore directed in the spring and summer of 1794 toward bolstering 
by treaties and alliances the naval power of the empire. First fruit 
of this masterful foreign policy was the treaty with Russia, in which 
both powers agreed to stop all exports of military supplies or pro- 
visions to French ports and frankly acknowledged the purpose of 
taking "all other measures for injuring the commerce of France" 
and preventing neutrals from giving protection to it on the high seas. 
In quick succession there followed a series of measures of like con- 
sequence. Spain acceded to a similar arrangement on May 25. The 



2 8 S. F. Bemis 

first Orders in Council came, June 8, to bring into British harbors 
all provisions found on board neutral ships bound for French ports, 
whether these ports were blockaded or not.^ The Two Sicilies 
(July 12), Prussia (July 14), Austria (August 30), and Portugal 
(September 26) acknowledged in treaties with Great Britain the 
same determination to annihilate the commerce of the new republic* 
French armies withstood valiantly the blows of Europe armed 
against them. The reborn vigor that never fails France delivered 
counter-strokes of more than equal weight. Yet the rulers of the 
Revolution saw the British naval-diplomatic system engulfing the 
principal monarchies of Europe, and British fighting vessels every- 
where threatening arbitrary control of all other powers. 

France by the autumn of 1793 saw herself almost completely en- 
circled by the constricting coils of the power that controls the sea. 
The diplomatic representatives of Russia and Great Britain had 
informed the monarchs of Sweden and Denmark that British and 
Russian fleets would be stationed in the Baltic and North seas to 
stop all kinds of provisions bound for France under whatever flag.^ 
If the plan were carried out successfully, the EngHsh had succeeded 
in blocking the Baltic to France by extending contraband to cover 
not only naval-store products of that region, so necessary to the 
French navy, but the great supplies of food that the Swedes and 
Danes sent through the Sounds to the impoverished republic. 
The same prohibitions confronted vessels from America. They were 
forced to land their masts and barrels of tar and pitch on British 
wharves, and to empty their cargoes of grain into the bins of British 
warehouses. Except for the Baltic Scandinavian ports, a few Italian 
harbors, and the cities of the Levant, all Europe and America, as a 
result of the British system, was closing to the ships of the new 
republican flag. 

3 " That it shall be lawful to stop and detain all vessels loaded wholly or in 
part with corn, flour, or meal, bound to any port of France, or any port occupied 
by the armies of France, and to send them to such ports as shall be convenient, 
in order that such corn, meal, or flour may be purchased on behalf of His 
Majesty's Government, and the ships be released after such purchase, and after 
a due allowance for freight, or that the masters of such ships, on giving due se- 
curity, to be approved by the court of admiralty, be permitted to proceed to dis- 
pose of their cargoes of corn, meal, or flour, in the ports of any country in 
amity with His Majesty." Amer. State Papers, For. Rel., I. 240. 

4 For text of these treaties see Am. State Papers, For. Rel., I. 243 (for Rus- 
sia) ; for Prussia, Austria, Spain, the Two Sicilies, and Portugal, see Parliamentary 
History, XXX. 1053— 1058. Portugal and the Two Sicilies, however, did not ac- 
cept the provision concerning' neutrals. 

5 For text of notes see Annual Register, 1794, p. 241. 



The Armed Neutrality of i/'P4 29 

Among those nations still upholding the more liberal interpreta- 
tions of international law lingering from the First Armed Neutral- 
ity remained only Sweden, Denmark, feeble Poland (now already 
slipping into the grasp of the three partitioners), and Turkey. The 
United States, to be sure, had incorporated these principles in its 
first treaties and had made formal protest against the Orders in 
Council of June 8;'* but the protests were fortified only by para- 
graphs from Pufendorf and Vattel. The relentless pressure of 
naval power had made them only perfunctory. The British ministry 
had been careful to feel out the attitude of the American administra- 
tion toward any such proceding before the Orders were issued. 
Alexander Hamilton, the most influential and cogent of the advisers 
of Washington, for five years had been in confidential communica- 
tion with the British minister, George Hammond, and with Major 
George Beckwith, in an informal sense his predecessor.' He quietly 
assured Hammond that he saw the justice behind the Orders in 
Council, though he was not able to answer for the opinions of his 
colleagues.^ As a result, the British Foreign Office paid only polite 
attention to the protests penned so assiduously by Jefferson, secre- 
tary of state. ^ Even along the thinly populated shores of the coast 
of northern Africa the pressure- made itself felt; there lurked the 
sea-harpies of the Mediterranean, the Barbary pirates, whose cor- 
sairs, released by British mediation from a war with Portugal,^" 
were free to prey on such French vessels as might slip past hostile 
cruisers on the voyage to Venice and the Levant. Both in the old 
and in the nev/ world the remorseless force of the enemy's sea 
power threatened to strangle the commercial life of France. 

With this aggressive diplomatic and naval system threatening to 
neutralize all the valor of the armies of France, the revolutionary 
executives strove to achieve some effective opposing combination. 
There was one obvious possibility. Encroachments and restrictions 
on neutral trade struck vitally at the prosperity of the Scandinavian 

B Am. State Pap., For. Rel., I. 241, 449-454. 

7 The confidential relations of Hamilton with the British representatives at 
Philadelphia may be seen clearly in the correspondence of those representatives 
with the Foreign Office. See Record Office, Foreign Office, America, ser. 4, vol. 
12 for Beckwith correspondence; vols. 13—16 for Hammond correspondence. 

8 Hammond to Grenville, Philadelphia, May 17, 1793. R. O., F. 0., ser. 5, 
vol. I. Where there is not specifically mentioned in these notes the name of some 
other state, in parenthesis, it is to be understood that citations of these volumes 
of Foreign Office Correspondence refer to America. Record Office, Foreign Office 
Papers, is abbreviated as R. O., F. O. See List of Inde.ves to Foreign Office 
Records (London, 1914). 

9 Grenville to Hammond, January 11, 1794. R. O., F. O., ser. 5, vol. 4. 

10 ^m. State Pap., For. Rel., I. 2S8. 



30 5". F. Bemis 

nations, whose flags in war-times obviously would cover great profits, 
but who depended even in times of peace on the business of the carry- 
ing trade. They followed that impulse which is almost an instinct 
with small nations that have large merchant marines but small 
fighting navies. The two northern monarchies, whose interests led 
them to adopt more liberal principles of the law of nations, protested 
vigorously against the British provision order. Their protest 
brought nothing but chagrin. Neither kingdom could undertake 
resistance by force. Sweden, lacking funds to equip a half-dozen 
ships-of-the-line, had the dangerous Finnish and Pomeranian fron- 
tiers and little real strength to guard them. Denmark was clamped 
in a vice, the jaws of which were the British and Russian navies. 

French diplomats, however, saw in the Baltic a chance to offset 
the system of the English. It consisted in resurrecting the armed 
neutrality of the previous war. Soon after matters had begun to 
adjust themselves to British participation in the conflict, a French 
agent had accompanied to Stockholm the Baron de Stael, Swedish 
minister in France, in an effort to induce the two powers of the 
north to unite in a new armed neutrality. But the Regent of Sweden 
— with an eye always to his threatened frontiers — had desired a 
permanent alliance ; and France, already launched on the successful 
campaign of 1793, did not regard with much enthusiasm the few 
equivalents which Sweden, diplomatically and geographically iso- 
lated, could offer for such an alliance.^^ 

These early negotiations withered away, but the French con- 
tinued to give sharp attention to the Baltic and to the possibility of 
concerted action by Sweden and Denmark in the face of England. 
A French agent, Philippe de Grouvelle, was vested with the powers 
of minister plenipotentiary in the summer of 1793 and sent to 
Copenhagen as representative of the French republic. He had in- 
structions to keep Denmark and Sweden united diplomatically in 
defense of their neutral rights as interpreted by themselves, and if 
possible to stimulate the two courts to a real joint alliance in favor 
of France.^- Grouvelle soon found that France had a common 
grievance with the Baltic Powers because of the British and Russian 
notes, above referred to, and he had no difficulty in establishing 
himself on the most friendly terms with the Count von Bernstorff, 
royal Danish chancellor.^^ In the face of the monarchs allied against 

11 Rapport au Comite de Salut Public, Suede et Dannemarck, 16 Floreal, an 
II. (May 5, 1794). Archives des Affaires Etrangeres, Suede, vol. 2S6,. pp. 224-227.' 

12 Grouvelle au Ministre des Affaires fitrangeres, Copenhagen, September 10, 
1793. Arch. Aff. Strang., Dannemarck, vol. 169, p. 245. 

13 Grouvelle au Ministre des Affaires Etrangeres, Hamburg, August 14, 1793. 
Ibid., vol. 169, p. 213. 



The Armed Neutrality of i/P4 3^ 

France, Bernstor'ff did not quite dare to receive Grouvelle as the 
official representative of the revolutionary French republic." 
Nevertheless, he had frequent and intimate conferences with him 
and for all practical purposes Grouvelle had the status and influence 
of French ambassador. He made arrangements for the quicker and 
more lucrative disposal of French prizes brought into Norwegian 
harbors, brought forward proposals for a new commercial treaty, 
supplied the Committee of Public Safety with such information as 
he had gleaned from the chancellor concerning the belligerent courts 
— then, as now, neutral Denmark was a great clearing-house for 
European war news, and Bernstorff was best informed of all diplo- 
mats — and above all pushed his proposals for joint armed neutrality 
of Sweden and Denmark/'' 

Bernstorfif asserted to Grouvelle that complete confidence and 
unanimity as to policy prevailed between Denmark and Sweden, but 
refused to make any definite promises. ^^ He said that such a pro- 
posal for a joint armament had been made by Denmark to Sweden. 
It was soon hinted by Erenheim, Swedish minister at Copenhagen, 
that Sweden's delay in preparing any armament to be used in pos- 
sible co-operation with Denmark was due to poverty — a French 
subsidy to help Sweden to maintain her armed neutrality would be 
useful and proper.^^ The French Minister of Foreign Affairs 
thought such an investment unwise on the ground that commercial 
privileges offered by France would be sufficient stimulus for such 
an armed neutrality; the interest of Denmark and Sweden, Grou- 
velle was instructed,^* would be sufficient to induce them to combine 
forces against Russia and England. Grouvelle wrote back that 
though apparently steps were being taken by the Scandinavians to 
preserve neutrality by separate action, he did not think such induce- 
ments would suffice to maintain a joint alliance. ^^ 

Meanwhile plans were being made in Paris to expand the possi- 
bilities of a Baltic armed neutrality into a grandiose combination. 
There is a memorandum of the plan in the library of the French 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Committee of Public Safety 

I'' Same to same. Ibid., pp. 394, 427, 428. 

15 Same to same (no. 18), Copenhagen, 11 Nivose, an II. (December 31, 
1793). Ibid., p. 476. 

18 Grouvelle au Ministre des Affaires Etrangeres, Copenhagen, September 3, 
1793. Ibid., p. 232. 

17 Same to same, Copenhagen, October i, 1793. Ibid., p. 270. 

18 Deforgues, ministre des Affaires Etrangeres, a Grouvelle, Paris, November 
13, 1793. Ibid., p. 347. 

13 Grouvelle au Ministre des Affaires fitrangeres, Copenhagen, December 17, 
1793. Ibid., p. 345. 



32 S. F. Bemis 

elaborated the early approaches to Sweden and Grouvelle's diplo- 
macy into an ambitious design to strengthen the European influence 
of the revolutionary government, already stiffened into some co- 
herence by the victories of 1793. The project was to unite all re- 
maining neutral naval states about the French revolutionary execu- 
tive in resistance to British sea power. It included Sweden, Den- 
mark, Turkey, Poland, Venice, Genoa, and the United States. 
Singly these nations saw themselves powerless to enforce what they 
considered to be principles of fairness toward neutral flags. To- 
gether they might be strong enough to revive the power of the armed 
neutrality of the last war. The foundation of the League, reads this 
interesting document, was to be "the indefeasible rights and inde- 
pendence of these nations and their immediate interests ". 

As a foyer for this " counter-coalition ", so formidable on paper, 
and really pregnant with powerful possibilities, the committee se- 
lected the Scandinavian courts. The monarchies were to enter a 
joint defensive alliance to assert the principles of armed neutrality 
against all naval aggressions. France would offer peculiar commer- 
cial advantages to the armed neutrals, and on actual signature of a 
treaty she would engage to furnish 6,000,000 livres, in addition to 
500,000 livres for each vessel of the line fully equipped and 300,000 
livres for each frigate. 

The committee had drawn up instructions accordingly and had ap- 
pointed proper diplomatic agents for the affair, when there arrived 
in Paris a copy of a convention^" already signed by Sweden and 
Denmark and setting forth in a timorous way the armed neutrality 
principles. This treaty, signed secretly on March 27, 1794, was for 
the duration of the war. The two northern powers agreed to fur- 
nish a joint armament of sixteen ships-of-the-line to protect their 
subjects in the exercise of rights sanctioned by law and indisputably 
to be enjoyed by independent nations. The Baltic was to be closed 
to the war-vessels of belligerent nations, and to be free, therefore, 
from rules of war. Faltering protection against illegal interference 
with their rightful commerce by the immense British and Russian 
naval forces was provided as follows : the neutral allies would make 
reprisals in concert after all other means of dissuasion had been 
rejected, and "at the latest, four months after the rejection of their 
behests, whenever such reprisals should be deemed suitable, the 

20"Projet d'Arrete du Comite de Salut Public", undated. It was never 
carried out. Adet, former minister to the United States, was nominated. It is 
indorsed " N'a pas eu lieu". Arch. Aff. fitrang., Dannemarck, vol. 170, p. 85. 
See also " Rapport au Comite de Salut Public, Suede et Dannemarck ", Arch. Aff. 
Etrang., Suede, vol. 2S6, p. 225, verso. This document enables one to fix the date 
of the Projet. 



The Armed Neutrality of i/p4 33 

Baltic always excepted". In no specific form were the rights of 
neutral nations defined ; definition was to be covered by the treaty 
interpretations of the Baltic Powers-^ — the principles of the First 
Armed Neutrality. The lack of resolute provision for energetic 
action made the convention at best a weak one. " It is a demonstra- 
tion of a force and temper which do not exist ", wrote the observing 
Gouverneur Morris from France. ^'^ 

Half-hearted as this instrument may have been, it was a good 
beginning for the plans then being formulated in Paris. The in- 
structions already drawn up were dropped, for what they aimed to 
accomplish in the first place had been attained. The Swedes had 
been indiscreet enough to close the convention door before the 
French-subsidy horse had been led in — unwisely they had asked for 
money after the treaty had been signed and made known.^^ At one 
time the committee had decided to advance substantial funds to ac- 
celerate the Swedish armament,^* but Grouvelle wrote that it 
seemed probable that Sweden herself might aflford the initial ex- 
penses of armament,-^ and the money-chest of the revolutionary 
executive was notoriously hollow. The advances were never made. 
The failure of the French subsidy, the threatening presence in the 
Baltic and North seas of Russian and British fleets, and one other 
factor smothered the infant armed neutrality in its cradle. With it 
expired the hopes of including other powers in the " counter- 
coalition ". The other, third, factor in the downfall of this ambi- 
tious diplomatic enterprise was the diplomatic mission to England 
of John Jay, chief justice of the United States. 

In the spring of 1794, without the ministry in London being im- 
mediately aware of it, owing to the tardiness of winter mail, British- 

21 Treaty of Mutual Defense, Liberty, Security and Commerce, March 27, 
1794. F. 0., ser. 115, vol. 3; Annual Register, 1794, pp. 238-239. 

-2 " You will observe that time is given the belligerent Powers for repentance 
and amendment, before any hostile act of resentment by the contracting parties. 
You will observe, also, that the period specified is sufficient to permit the arresta- 
tion of all supplies shipped for this country' [France] during the present season. 
Thus the next autumn and winter are left clear for negotiation, should the allies 
be unsuccessful in this campaign." Morris to Randolph, Sainport, May 31, 1794. 
Am. State Pap., For. Rel., I. 409. 

23 Grouvelle a Deforgues, no. 30, Copenhagen, March 28, 1794. Arch. Aff. 
Strang., Dannemarck, vol. 70. 

24 " Rapport ", etc., supra. Arch. Aff. Strang., Suede, vol. 286, pp. 224-227. 

25 See long and interesting despatch of Grouvelle au Ministre des Affaires 
fitrangeres, Copenhagen, February :8, 1794. Arch. Aff. Etrang., Dannemarck, 
vol. 170, p. 55. 

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XXIV. — 3. 



34 S. F. Bemis 

American relations had reached a critical stage. The crisis had 
been brought about by the several familiar disputes between England 
and America that in March had suddenly ripened to an ominous 
condition. First were the old disputes about the northern frontier 
posts on American soil. British troops still held these strategic points 
under the ostensible but not real excuse'" that the United States 
had first violated the treaty by obstructing the collection of ante- 
bellum debts to English merchants. With these stood the legacy of 
minor disputes also left by the treaty. Secondly, there was the 
disappointment of the American government at not being able to 
conclude a commercial treaty with Great Britain, whose navigation 
laws struck sharply at the now independent states, particularly by 
excluding their ships from the British West Indies. England at first 
had been quite content to "sit still" in the agreeable commercial 
status quo, since American trade still ran in old colonial channels to 
English wharves ;"' but this commercial situation, so undesirable to 
the United States, led to American tariff and tonnage duties in favor 
of American vessels.-* This bore particularly hard on British trade, 
because the traffic with England constituted three-fourths of all 
American commerce and over half of this three-fourths was carried 
in British ships. ^^ A strong movement, developing in Congress and 
the administration, under the leadership of Madison and Jefferson, 
to discriminate specifically against the British flag, had only been 
checked by a sudden decision to establish a permanent British lega- 
tion in Philadelphia headed by George Hammond, first British 

20 This statement is based on a careful reading of the Canadian correspond- 
ence in Ottawa and London, which shows that orders were actually sent to Gen- 
eral Haldimand to hold the posts before the very convenient and plausible excuse 
of American violations of the treaty was discovered. The evidence is too long 
to be quoted in detail here. Particularly illuminating, however, is the despatch of 
Sydney to Haldimand, April 8, 1784 (Canadian Archives, Q 23, 55), sent before 
the formal exchange of ratifications of the definitive treaty. It should be read 
in connection with Grenville's argument as stated in Jay to Randolph, London, 
Septembeir 13, 1794. Am. State Pap., For. Rel., I. 485-496. See also Channing, 
History of the United States, IV. 148-149, for an illuminating note. 

27 Sheffield, Observations on the Commerce of the American States (17S4. sixth 
ed.), p. 161; Report of the Privy Council on American Trade, January 28, 1791, 
in Collection of Important Papers on Navigation and Trade (London, 1808), p. 114. 

28 Acts of July 4, July 20, 1789; June 20, August 10, 1790. U. S. Statutes 
at Large, I. 27, 180, 335. 

29 The proportion which American commerce to Great Britain bore to the 
total is ascertained by a comparison of American exports and imports as stated 
annually from 1790 in Am. State Pap., Commerce and Navigation, vol. I. For 
figures for tonnage see : Collection of Interesting and Important Papers on Navi- 
gation and Trade (London, 1808), app. XXIV. 



The Armed Neutrality of 1794 35 

minister to the United States.^" Soon it became evident that 
Hammond had no instructions to sign a commercial treaty and 
that he was trying to couple the evacuation of the frontier posts 
with the establishment of a " neutral " Indian barrier state that 
would keep the natives of the great American hinterland north of 
the Ohio in a British sphere of influence, economic and political. 
The negotiations as to the border fell into abeyance, and when fron- 
tier friction between British officers and " British " Indians, and the 
Americans, had worked disastrously on the self-control of Lord 
Dorchester, governor-general of Canada, the latter made his notori- 
ous and bellicose secret speech to a delegation of Indian tribes, 
February 10, 1794, in which he prophesied an immediate war with 
the Americans and sought the alhance of the tomahawk."*^ Intelli- 
gence of this unwary utterance soon leaked out. It reached Phila- 
delphia almost simultaneously with the arrival of news from the 
West Indies of the capture of about three hundred American 
schooners under the wholly arbitrary Order in Council of Novem- 
ber 6, 1793, and the barbarous incarceration of their crews and 
officers. 

In late March and April the majority of the American people 
were for war with Great Britain. The crystallizing " Democratic " 
party, under the leadership of Madison and the now retired Jeffer- 
son, passed an embargo for a month, soon extended for another 
thirty days, on all shipping in American harbors. Bills for actual 
sequestration of British property and vigorous discrimination 
against the British flag specifically, immediately received strong sup- 
port in Congress. The movement was headed off by Alexander 
Hamilton, profound leader of the Federalist party, that had formed 
in contradistinction to the "Democrats" (the division in 1794 was 
chiefly over the British policy). In a war with England at that par- 
ticular time, the Federalists forecasted the total collapse of the new 
government under the Constitution. The new political system, 
brought into practical operation by Hamilton's genius in establishing 
American credit, depended for revenues almost wholly on the tariff 
and tonnage duties collected in American ports. Almost alone this 
financial means upheld the credit of the federal and the assumed 
state debts and paid the operating expenses of the government itself. 

30 See Beckwith to Grenville, March 3, 1791, R. O., F. O., ser. 4, vol. 12; P. 
Colquohoun to Grenville, August 5, i79i, Dropmore Papers, II. 157; Beckwith to 
Grenville, Philadelphia, July 31, i79i, R. O., F. O., ser. 4, vol. 12; Colquohoun to 
Grenville, July 29, 1791, Dropmore Papers, II. 145 ; Can. Arch. Report, 1890, p. 172. 

31 For copy of speech see Annual Register, 1794, pp. 250-251 ; also Can. Arch., 
Q 64, 109. 



36 S. F. Ben lis 

By war, suddenly to eliminate three-fourths of American commerce 
and to endanger the rest to the point of extinction meant to knock 
away the scaffolding of credit from beneath the new government, 
and so to precipitate its destruction. A lapse into the pitiful polit- 
ical helplessness of the Confederation would be then inevitable. To 
avoid this, Hamilton, in close and quiet intimacy with Hammond, 
used that connection, in a sort of " back-stairs " diplomacy,^^ to 
thwart the official anti-Anglican character of the negotiations of 
the Secretary of State, Jefferson. With a group of Federalist sena- 
tors'^ he now had sufficient influence in the administration to bring 
about the appointment of Chief Justice John Jay for the peace mis- 
sion of 1794. In Congress he marshalled sufficient power to block 
the retaliatory and hostile measures until the results of Jay's mission 
should be known. Meanwhile the Federalists with vigor supported 
a bill for raising an army, and Hamilton led the British minister to 
believe that if Jay did not succeed in getting a certain minimum of 
moderate concessions, which he outlined in private to him, the exist- 
ing peaceful relations with England could not endure.^'' 

At the very moment when the Danish-Swedish convention of 
March 27, 1794, was signed, this ominous American war-cloud was 
rising on the other side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile the solidity of 
the First Coalition was beginning to weaken. Secret agents of the 
British Foreign Office were reporting that France was seeking to 
detach Spain by approaches through neutral Denmark. '° As a mat- 
ter of fact, the Spanish minister in Copenhagen did have instruc- 
tions to make overtures looking toward peace.'" Simultaneously, in 
view of the greater allurement of the Polish spoil, Prussia's influence 
on the Rhine was weakening. Among the allies " there was far 
more of disunion than union ".''' 

Though the Swedish-Danish convention had been ratified in 
secret, and its negotiation was supposed to have been kept in the 
same secrecy, the whole train of Franco-Scandinavian diplomacy 
was well and with a fair degree of accuracy known to Lord Gren- 
ville. The increasing naval armaments of Denmark had for some 
time excited the suspicion of his representative in Copenhagen, 

32 See evidence cited above, note 7. 

33 King, Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, I. 516. 

31 Hammond to Grenville (no. 15), Philadelphia, April 17, 1794. F. O., ser. 
5, vol. 4. 

35 Precis of Secret Intelligence from Copenhagen. F. O., Holland, ser. 37, 
vol. 36. 

36 Grouvelle Correspondence, Arch. Aff. Strang., Dannemarck, vols. 169 and 
170. 

37 J. H. Rose, William Pitt and the Great War, p. 204. 



The Armed Neutrality of 1794 2)7 

though Count von Bernstorff had strongly denied any connection 
with France/^ and at Stockhohii express assurances were made 
that no arrangements with Denmark were contemplated.^" Grou- 
velle, who was more privy to the chancellor than any other for- 
eigner, was imprudent enough to send his despatches to Paris by 
ordinary mail, with only parts of them in cipher — a lack of caution 
wholly inexcusable, for which he was later roundly censured by 
the Committee of Public Safety.^" It vi'as so reckless a procedure as 
almost to prick the investigator's suspicions as to Grouvelle himself. 
Spies read nearly all of his correspondence. A concise precis of it 
is preserved at the British Record OfHce''^ and tallies perfectly with 
the original despatches in the library of the Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs at Paris. They knew the content of Grouvelle's despatches 
at Downing Street almost as soon as at the Quai d'Orsay. 

The Swedish minister in London was Laurent von Engestrom. 
He informed Thomas Pinckney, American representative there, on 
April 28, 1794, that he had instructions not only to communicate a 
copy of the convention but to invite the accession of the United 
States to it. Pinckney seemed greatly pleased. He secured a state- 
ment to that effect in writing and sent it home the very day. It 
would be received " with open arms ", Engestrom understood him to 
believe.*- The same day, the Swedish and Danish ministers, "lest 
their sincerity be suspected 'V^ gave a copy of the convention to Lord 
Grenville. Though nothing was divulged of the overture to Pinck- 
ney, Grenville, through the intercepted Grouvelle despatches, soon 
learned of it by the same means by which he had already known of 
the convention itself. Immediately he instructed Hammond, at 
Philadelphia, to make the utmost exertions to prevent the success of 
any such proposal. To the American " ministers " he must confi- 

3S D. Hailes (British charge d'affaires at Copenhagen) to Grenville, Copen- 
hagen, March 24, 1794, cipher, rec'd April 3, 1794. F. O., Denmark, ser. 22, 
vol. 18. 

39 H. G. Spencer (British minister to Sweden) to Grenville, Stockholm, April 
18, 1794, cipher, F. O., Sweden, ser. 73, vol. 17; same to same, Stockholm, April 
18, 1794, cipher, ibid. 

i" Commissionnaire des Affaires Etrangeres (Buchot) a Grouvelle, Paris, 4 
Prairial, an II. Arch. Aff. fitrang., Dannemarck, vol. 170, p. 16. 

■*i Precis of Secret Intelligence from Copenhagen. F. 0., Holland, ser. 37, 
vol. 56. 

■'^ EngestrSm to the Royal Chancellor (Frederick Sparre), London, April 29, 
1794. Swedish Royal Archives, Anglica, Engestrom's Despatches. For tran- 
scriptions of such Swedish documents as are cited here, I am indebted to Dr. 
Lydia Wahlstrom, of Stockholm. 

*3 Engestrom to Erenheim (Swedish minister, Copenhagen), May 26, 1794. 
Ibid. 



38 5'. F. Bemis 

dently emphasize the marked difference in circumstances between 
the position of the United States and the Baltic Powers, laying stress 
on the point that in return for fair neutrality on the part of the 
United States, American commerce had been treated in a spirit of 
fairness (this was written before Grenville had heard of the explod- 
ing American wrath against the British naval policy). The Amer- 
ican government, wrote Grenville, must be aware of the risks of 
being drawn into a conflict with England, especially in view of the 
weak state of the Scandinavian navy." Three weeks later, on June 
5, Grenville informed Hammond that he had reason to believe that 
the Swedish proposal to America had not the sanction of the Danish 
court, but he urged the closest attention to the matter. It was true 
that the Engestrom note to Pinckney did not have the support of 
Denmark. Grenville learned this through Grouvelle's despatches. 
Shortly after it had been made, Engestrom received instructions that 
Denmark had not acquiesced in the demarche, and that any Amer- 
ican answer must be considered merely ad referendiiin.*" Berns- 
torfif's reason for declining to join the invitation — this was still be- 
fore the news of the British-American crisis was known in Europe 
— was that he considered the American navy wholly too feeble to 
co-operate effectively i**" really the reason was that too much of this 
adventurous policy on his part would probably result in a quick 
offensive by the English or Russian fleet, then parading the Baltic*^ 
— the lot of Holland in 1780 and the fate of Denmark in 1800. 

One of the most interesting aspects of British-American diplo- 
macy in this period lies in the relations of time and distance and the 
precarious schedule of packet-boats. In the days when neither cable 
nor wireless telegraph existed, the international situation of the 
world did not vary like a stockbroker's ribbon, as the telegraph 
clicks oft" each detail of news from the governments of Christendom 
and other governments ; the most important transatlantic intelligence 
was often long delayed, and often when news finally arrived it came 
in big consignments instead of in daily driblets. Such was the case in 
the crisis of 1794. Up till June 10, after the American commis- 
sioner. Jay, had actually set foot on English soil, Grenville had not 

4-1 Grenville to Hammond, Downing Street, May 14, 1794 (no. 12), cipher. 
F. O., ser. 5, vol. 5. 

45 The Royal Chancellor (Sparre) to Engestrom, Stockholm, May 16, 1794. 
Swedish Royal Archives, Anglica (1794). 

*6 Grouvelle to Buchot (minister of foreign aifairs), no. 41, 9 Prairial, an 11. 
(May 29, 1794). Arch. Aft. Strang., Dannemarck, vols. 170, 180. 

47 Erenheim to Engestrom, Copenhagen, J^ily 8, 1794. Swedish Royal Ar- 
chives, Anglica (1794)- 



The Armed Neutrality of 17^4 39 

received an official word about tlie critical American situation.'"* 
On that day, June 10, a great deal of surprising news from North 
America lay on the desks of the foreign and home secretaries when 
the despatches from the Canadian and American mail-packets were 
opened. American indignation over the captures made under the 
additional and unprecedented Order in Council of November 6, 
1793/° Dorchester's speech of February 10 to the Indians, the news 
of imminent hostilities on the frontier,^" the embargo, the sequestra- 
tion and non-intercourse bills, the resolution to send Jay, the sober 
interview between Hamilton and Hammond, the real and actual 
imminence of war with America — with America, the source of Brit- 
ish naval supplies and the largest single customer for British manu- 
factures — made up a budget of information that gave the Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs considerable pause and food for thought as on 
the same morning he unsealed a letter from Falmouth bearing the 
signature of John Jay, and announcing his commission from the 
President as special envoy to His Majesty. 

The news was a complete surprise ; up to this time Grenville had 
dealt with the United States in a leisurely fashion ; there had been 
little uneasiness at Downing Street over the American situation. 
Now it was apparent, suddenly, that this confidence was wholly 
misplaced. 

In addition to the information received by way of the intercepted 
French despatches, Grenville was receiving other secret reports, 
false indeed, which made the Scandinavian-American possibilities 
seem more alarming. On June 20, the day of the first conference 
between Jay and Grenville, came a letter from the British charge 
at Berlin, telling of an interview with Count Finckenstein, the fa- 
mous Prussian minister of foreign affairs, in which the dubious 
disposition of America had been discussed. Finckenstein confided 
some American information that, in view of Jeii'erson's resignation 
as secretary of state and retirement on January i, 1794, to Monti- 
cello, was as weirdly fantastic as it must have been startling to Gren- 
ville. Jefferson, said the Prussian count, was expected soon in 
Denmark, there to concert measures that should be followed by the 
neutral nations. '^^ Strangely enough, the Danish chancellor also had 

*s Hammond to Grenville, February 20. April 17, May i, 1794, F. O., ser. 5, 
vol. 4; Grenville to Hammond, June S, 1794, cipher, F. O., ser. 115, vol. 3. 

■1^ To " stop and detain all ships laden with goods the produce of any colony 
belonging to France, or carrying provisions or other supplies for the use of any 
such colony, and should bring the same, with their cargoes, for legal adjudication 
in our courts of admiralty ". Am. State Pap., For. Rel., I. 430. 

50 Dorchester to Dundas. February 24, 1794. Can. Arch., Q 67, 88. 

51 G. H. Rose to Grenville, Berlin, June id, 1794, rec'd June 20. F. O., 
Prussia, ser. 64, vol, 29. 



40 S. F. Bemis 

a similar notion. '^^ A few days later came a letter from Hammond, 
of May 25, telling of the increasing hostility of the American public 
due to the news of the occupation of the old Miami fort^' by British 
troops, and enclosing the acrid correspondence between himself and 
Randolph, Jefiferson's Francophil successor. 

As if this were not enough, there arrived, at very near this time, 
one of the curious Francis Drake bulletins, which purported to trans- 
mit secret copies of the minutes of the meetings of the Committee of 
Public Safety, but were really literary productions meant to be pe- 
rused by and designed to mislead the British Foreign Office.^* 
Whether Grenville was wholly duped by these inventions is uncertain, 
but he expressly asked Drake to get him information about French 
negotiations with Sweden and Denmark. The " secret " information 
which Drake furnished professed to relate that in the Committee of 
Public Safety despatches had been read from its American agents, 
under date of April i, which declared war between the United States 
and Great Britain inevitable, and stated that immediately afterward 
a treaty would be concluded between the former and Denmark and 
Sweden. The French commissioners in America were represented 
as having requested power to conclude preliminaries of a treaty 
with the United States and to guarantee Congress that the Conven- 
tion would not treat with the Northern Powers without admitting 

52 Grouvelle au Ministre des Affaires Etrangeres, Copenhagen, 22 Prairial, an 
II. (June II, 1794). Arch. Aff. Strang., Dannemarck, vol. 170, p. 192. The pres- 
ent writer has not been able wholly to run down the source of this rumor. 

53 Near the city of Toledo, Ohio. 

5* The validity of the Drake despatches was first discredited by Mr, J. H. 
Clapham (English Historical Review, January, 1897) and by Professor A. Aulard 
(^Revolution Frangaise, 1897, vol. XXXII.) on the ground that they do not agree 
with certain well-established facts in the sources for the history of the Committee 
of Public Safety. This opinion rested unchallenged until 1914, when M. Albert 
Mathiez presented an article in defense of the documents, citing sources with 
which to him they appear to agree (" Histoire Secrete du Comite de Salut Public ", 
Revue des Questions Historiques, January, 19 14). Without being wholly familiar 
with the sources for the Committee of Public Safety, the writer was soon con- 
vinced, by collating the despatches from Grouvelle from Copenhagen (whence the 
committee got its information), those from the French commissioners in Phila- 
delphia to the Committee of Public Safety, and the despatches of Gouverneur 
Morris, American minister to France, that the Drake information was not true. 
Very cleverly, just enough truth is put into the despatches to make them deceiving. 
For documents see : Turner, " Correspondence of the French Ministers ", Am. 
Hist. Assoc, Ann. Rept., 1903, vol. II. ; Archives du Ministere des Affaires 
fitrangeres, £tats-Unis, vols. 40-43, 1793, 1794; and Dannemarck, vols. 169, 170, 
1793, 1794; Am. State Pap., For. Re!., vol. I., and published works of G. Morris, 
edited by A. C. Morris (18S9) and J. Sparks (1832). 



The Armed Neutrality of i/p4 41 

the United States to any treaty made by them.^'^ This last request 
was said to have been rejected, but the executive was authorized to 
negotiate with Morris, the American minister, and to report. It 
was also stated that letters from Stockholm of May 11 represented 
that court as ready to ratify a treaty with the French republic.^'^ 

In short, the British ministry in the summer of 1794 stood con- 
fronted with all the dangers of the revival of the old Armed Neu- 
trality at a time when — despite the Prussian treaty of April, 1794 — 
the coalition against France was already weakening"' toward the 
final disintegration of 1795. One exception there was to the situa- 
tion of 1781 : Pitt could count on Catherine the Great to join Britain 
against the Baltic Powers j'^' and Prussia, now a nominal ally of 
Great Britain"" and absorbed in the Polish partition, had no inclina- 
tion again to become a member of the Baltic combination. But there 
can be no doubt that the Baltic situation as viewed by the British 
ministry in June and July, 1794, had an appreciable effect on the 
American negotiations : it would be folly to allow the United States, ^ 
the greatest foreign customer of Great Britain,""* at a time when com- 
merce and the entrepot system were providing the revenue for the 
French war,"^ to join in a war against England, or in any such 
system as the policy of the Northern Powers, greased by French 
diplomacy, seemed to invite. It would serve to divide the energies 
and diminish the supplies of the British navy, and to weaken the 
financial sinews of the government in its great struggle with France. 
Great Britain desired war no more than did the American Federal- 
ists. The time had come for some kind of immediate settlement 
with the United States. 

Grenville took immediate steps to relieve the American tension. 
Concessions were made which postponed all immediate danger from 
America and looked toward a conciliatory negotiation. The old 
policy of procrastinating at the frontier posts until a " neutral " In- 
dian barrier state had been created was abandoned and arrangements 
made to step across the line to Canadian soil, in the event of a treaty. 

55 Bulletin no. 25, Despatches of Francis Drake. Dropmore Papers, II. 578. 
The writer has been unable to find any despatch of April i in the French archives, 
or anything resembling it. 

56 Ibid. 

57 Rose, William Pitt and the Great War, ch. VIII. 

58 Prussia's treaty of alliance with Great Britain of 1793 provided for meas- 
ures to induce neutral powers to adopt a harassing attitude toward French com- 
merce. 

59 Whitworth to Grenville, St. Petersburg, April 15, 22, 23, 1794. F. O., Rus- 
sia, ser. 65, vol. 27. 

60 See Chatham Papers, bdle. 286, R. 0., cited above. 

61 Mahan, Sea Power and French Revolution, II. 18. 



42 S. F. Bemis 

For his hostile speech to the Indians, a sharp reprimand to Dor- 
chester followed, accompanied by concise instructions to use every 
means to cultivate a friendly disposition on the part of the United 
States.*^^ In case hostilities had already broken out between frontier 
units of American and British forces, Grenville and Jay agreed that 
everything should remain in statu quo pending the negotiations."^^ 
The king issued an Order in Council admitting all the American 
captures made in the West Indies to appeal in English prize courts 
from the petty and arbitrary admiralty courts of the islands."" By 
this all that Hamilton had stipulated to Hammond, on the eve of 
Jay's departure, as " absolutely indispensable for an amicable settle- 
ment of differences ",'^'^ was granted, and the door opened to a set- 
tlement of all points in dispute between the two nations. Grenville 
even went a step further. The Order in Council of June 8, 1793 
(that of November 6 had been altered already in January to the 
sense of June 8), was unostentatiously repealed in so far as it directed 
the capture and pre-emption of neutral grain-ships bound for 
France.*^" 

From August till November the negotiations between Jay and 
Grenville went on in leisurely discussion. The main principles neces- 
sary for a treaty had been agreed on when the British concessions 
were made and when Jay had consented to a commission for the 
adjudication of debts due to British creditors, and for settling the 
question of French prizes sold in American waters after Washing- 
ton's prohibition of their sale. Grenville's bargaining after this was 
very sharp. He attenuated his chaffering until he could hear from 
Hammond precisely the position of the American administration as 
to the Baltic Powers. 

In Jay's official instructions, made familiar by the publication 
for the Senate of part of the Jay negotiations, was the following 
paragraph : 

You will have no difficulty in gaining access to the ministers of Rus- 
sia, Denmark, and Sweden, at the Court of London. The principles of 
the armed neutrality would abundantly cover our neutral rights. If, 
therefore, the situation of things with respect to Great Britain should 

62 This led eventually to Dorchester's resignation. Dorchester to Dundas, 
Quebec, September 4, 1794. Can. Arch., Q 69-1, p. 176. 

63 Jay to Randolph, London, July 12, 1794, Am. State Pap., For. Rel., I. 479; 
Grenville to Hammond, July 15, 1794, F. O., ser. 115, vol. 3. 

j**4 Orders in Council, West Indies and America (1786-1797), R. O. 

65 Hammond to Grenville (no. 15), Philadelphia, April 17, 1794. F. O., 5, 4. 

66 Instructions to Naval Commanders, approved by the Privy Council, Au- 
gust 6, 1794, R. 0., Colonial Office S : 33 ; Orders in Council, West Indies to 
America, 1786-1797, Privy Council Register, vol. 141, p. 11. 



The Armed Neutrality of lypi 43 

dictate the necessity of taking the precaution of foreign co-operation 
upon this head; if no prospect of accommodation should be thwarted by 
the danger of such a measure being known to the British court; and if 
an entire view of all our political relations shall, in your judgment, per- 
mit the step, you will sound those ministers upon the probability of. an 
alliance with their nations to support those principles."^' 

Randolph wrote this paragraph. But Jay assumed a slightly- 
patronizing tone toward an official superior who was really of in- 
ferior political stature,"* and paid attention to the formal instructions 
of the Secretary of State only when convenient. That Jay might of 
necessity waive the principle of the armed neutrality, even to the 
extent of acquiescing in the Order of June 8, was admitted in Ham- 
ilton's private letter to him.^' Hamilton later states his disapproval 
of any diplomatic union with the Baltic Powers. 

At first Jay was intimate with the Danish and Swedish ministers 
at London. But it soon became their poHcy to " let him take his 
way " without making any definite assurances.'" Denmark was 
threatened by the Russian fleet patrolling the Baltic. Sweden had 
to guard its Finnish and Pomeranian frontiers. There was also the 
English fleet which five years later worked such havoc at Copen- 
hagen. The Armed Neutrality of 1794 was a threat rather than 
an immediate direct force. Only if political circumstances were 
opportune did it allow actual reprisals and the closure of the Baltic. 
Engestrom's correspondence with Stockholm shows that while 
Swedish diplomats considered more initiative advisable as to the 
United States, the Danish chancellor hesitated. He thought that, if 
no agreement were reached by Jay with the British court, the Amer- 
icans would fall naturally into the arms of the Scandinavians and 
an enlarged armed neutrality, and then would come the best time for 
real negotiations with them. If a treaty were concluded and con- 
cessions were made to the United States not allowed to other neu- 
trals, it would be almost equivalent to a declaration of war by Eng- 
land on Denmark and Sweden." Whatever may have been the 
conferences with the Scandinavians, of which not a word was ever 
made known in the official correspondence turned over to the Amer- 

S7 Instructions to Jay, May 6, 1794. Am. State Pap., For. ReU, I. 473. This 
was before any news of the Engestrom overture to Pinckney could have reached 
America, and was a mere conjecture of a possible diplomatic lever. Randolph's 
ignorance of the real state of European politics is shown by his allusion to Rus- 
sia, then the maritime ally of England. 

fs Jay to Randolph, July 30, 1794. Am. State Pap., For. Rel., I. 4S0. 

69 Hamilton to Jay, May 6, 1794. Hamilton, Works, IV. 551. 

70 Engestrom to the Royal Chancellor (Sparre), August 12, 1794. Swedish 
Royal Archives, Anglica (1794). 

'1 Erenheim to Engestrom, Copenhagen, July 8, 1794. Jbid. 



44 S. F. Benns 

ican Senate, Jay by August had turned aside from such cordiality.^- 
This was after the first conciHatory concessions had been made to 
him by the British negotiator. One wonders whether the Fed- 
eralists could have later put the Jay Treaty through the Senate if 
all the correspondence had been published ! 

Before Grenville learned from Hammond the real attitude of 
the American government toward armed neutrality, he was on the 
point of making much greater concessions in the proposed American 
treaty than were eventually, considered. On September 30, 1794, 
Jay submitted a draft which, he believed, incorporated most of the 
principles on which previous conferences had led him to expect 
agreement. No copy of this draft was conveyed to the Senate with 
the other drafts and projects of the negotiations turned over to it 
at the time when the treaty came up for ratification. One can guess 
the reason. This draft — more important than all the preliminary 
projects — was not included in the Jay correspondence, and probably 
was never even read by anyone on this side of the Atlantic," be- 
cause it compared too unfavorably with the terms of the final treaty 
itself. A copy, however, is in the British Record Office." 

There is no space here to enumerate the favorable terms of the 
draft of September 30. They were never agreed to because, ten 
days previously, Grenville had heard from Hammond that Alex- 
ander Hamilton said the United States would never accede to the 
Scandinavian convention. Hammond reported that Hamilton said 

with great seriousness and with every demonstration of sincerity . . . that 
it was the settled policy of this government in every contingency, even in 
that of an open contest with Great Britain, to avoid entangling itself 
with European connections, which would only tend to involve this coun- 
try where it might have no possible interest, and connect it to a common 
cause with allies, from whom, in the moment of danger, it could derive 
no succor. ... In support of this policy Mr. Hamilton urged many of 
the arguments advanced in your lordship's despatch, the dissimilitude 
between the political views as well as between general interests of the 
United States and those of the Baltic Powers, and the inefficiency of the 
latter, from their enfeebled condition, either to protect the navigation 
of the former in Europe or to afford it any active assistance if necessary 
in its own territory. 

Hammond could not find out whether the supposed Swedish proposi- 
tions had arrived from Pinckney, but from Hamilton's decided man- 

'i's Engestrom to the Royal Chancellor (Sparre), August 12, i794- Swedish 
Royal Archives, Anglica (1794). 

73 It is not included among the duplicates of Jay's correspondence in the 
Jay manuscripts in the New York Historical Society's collections, nor, of course, 
in the published Works of Jay. 

'* F. O., misc. ser. 95, vol. 512. 



The Armed Neutrality of iyp4 45 

ner he believed that the matter had received his attention before, and 
that what he had stated represented the dehberations of himself 
and of the American administration^'' That the Swedish proposal 
was received with no enthusiasm is indicated by Hamilton's letter 
of July 8, to Randolph, quoted in his works.'^ 

The result of this information in the hands of Grenville was to 
reduce all his fear of American co-operation with the Baltic Powers. 
With the latest news from Philadelphia in mind, no reason any longer 
existed why Grenville should submit to Jay's propositions of mari- 
time law, and, so that the Americans were mollified sufficiently to 
prevent hostilities or injurious commercial legislation, there was no 
longer any particular occasion for hurry. Jay, on the other hand, 
feared that some unforeseen contingency in the maelstrom of Euro- 
pean policy might derange the attitude of the British ministry toward 
the United States. The only concession Grenville would now make 
was to agree to a joint survey and settlement by commission of the 
unknown northwestern boundary. The other new points of Jay's 
draft he deemed " insurmountable obstacles ". 

Convinced that he could get no better terms and that on the 
whole those he had were satisfactory, the American envoy signed the 
treaty which has since been connected with his name. The articles, 
long familiar in American history, were a triumph of British diplo- 
macy. The only concessions made were the evacuation of the posts, 
which Grenville had before decided on in order to prevent a disruption 
of the valuable British- American trade ;^^ the admission of Amer- 
ican vessels, during the war only, to a direct West Indian trade, 
which the conditions of war had rendered it impracticable for Brit- 
ish ships adequately to maintain;'^ and compensation for captures 
" made under cover " of the arbitrary Orders in Council, without 

'5 Hammond to Grenville, no. 28, New York, August 3, 1794, rec'd September 
20. F. O., ser. 5, vol. 5. That the matter had received discussion, probably in the 
Cabinet, is indicated by Hamilton's letter of July 8, 1794 (at about the time the 
Engestrom proposal would have been received in America) :"The United States 
have peculiar advantages from situation, which would thereby be thrown into 
common stock without an equivalent. The United States had better stand in its 
own ground." 

76 " If a war, on the question of Neutral Rights, should take place, common 
interest would secure all the co-operation which is practical and occasional ar- 
rangements may be made ; what has already been done in this respect appears to 
be sufficient." Hamilton to Randolph, Philadelphia, July 8, 1794. Hamilton, 
Works, IV. 571. 

■'T Consideration on suggestions proposed for the Government of Upper and 
Lower Canada. R. O., C. 0., ser. 42, vol. 88, pp. 575-579. 

78 Mahan, Sea Power and French Revolution, II. 258. This article was not 
ratified by the Senate. 



46 5^. F. Bemis 

giving up the principle of those orders. The price paid by the 
Federahsts was, to make, by abeyance, a heavy though a regrettably 
necessary sacrifice of principle in the face of other national interests. 
Only one real advantage was secured — the evacuation of the frontier 
posts and the clearance of the last vestige of British control from 
the soil of the United States. By means of a mixed commission to 
compensate for spoliation " under cover " of the Orders in Council, 
Pitt secured from America a peaceable acquiescence in British naval 
policy that reversed completely the position taken by the young 
republic in all its previous treaties.'''' 

The episode of the abortive renewal in 1794 of the Armed Neu- 
trality and the relations of the United States to it are interesting in 
two ways. The decision of Hamilton, who in 1794 preponderated 
in the councils of Washington, not to participate in a European 
combination, marks the first definite acceptance by the government 
of the United States of the principle of abstention from foreign 
entanglements. Though the idea of such a policy may not have been 
wholly original with Hamilton, it was he who first gave it practical 
application. It was the proposal of the Scandinavians in the world 
war of the French Revolution that offered a chance for such a de- 
cision, and on the basis of Hamilton's reasoning the new govern- 
ment's policy was first actually oriented in that direction. **" Two 
years later it was publicly restated in Washington's Farewell Ad- 
dress, as an American policy of abstention from foreign entangle- 
ments ; Hamilton's verbal coinage of 1794 was there repeated. In 

'9 If the principle of the rule of 1756 was not recognized, it was consented 
to tacitly — a voluntary relaxation from it having been made, so far as the trade 
between the United States and the French islands was concerned, by the repeal 
of the Order of November 6, 1793. Restrictions on American exportations of 
stipulated West Indian products, of which the voyage had been broken by land- 
ing on American soil, would have cut off the carriage of French colonial prod- 
ucts, had the article been ratified by the Senate. There was no agreement on the 
question of food-stuffs as contraband, which the United States was bound by 
treaties with France, Sweden, and Holland to treat as non-contraband; the 
practice of Great Britain, who controlled the sea, in pre-empting food-stuffs 
bound for France was allowed by not being prohibited. In fact, Grenville stated 
that the treaty was a specific recognition of the British principle in this respect, 
when a little later the American government questioned additional instructions to 
British naval commanders of April 25, 1795, to detain all ships laden with pro- 
vision for France. (Grenville to Bond — charge d'affaires at Philadelphia after 
Hammond's departure — November 4, 1795, enclosing copy of the instructions, 
F. O., 115, 4). The principles of free ships, free goods, and the immunity of 
naval stores from seizure as contraband were wholly lost sight of. 

80 The idea, itself, that abstention from European alliances was advisable had 
occurred to other American political thinkers before Hamilton first put it into 
operation. See Hart, Monroe Doctrine, pp. 9—10. 



The Armed Neutrality of i'/Q4 47 

this sense, Alexander Hamilton was the author of one-half of the 
Monroe Doctrine, just as nearly thirty years later John Quincy 
Adams was the author of the other half. 

Again, the episode has its interest from the ambitious Franco- 
Scandinavian " neutral counter-coalition ", so adventurously con- 
structed in the imagination of French diplomatists. Though the lack 
of French subsidies to Sweden prevented that power from arming 
more actively in concert with Denmark against the preponderating 
naval power of England and Russia, the Jay Treaty administered the 
final blow to this daring diplomatic conception. Bernstorff con- 
stantly insisted to Grouvelle,"^ while the Jay negotiations were pro- 
ceeding, that it was the intention of the northern allies jointly to 
invite the accession of the United States. But that was not done, 
and meanwhile the treaty was signed. " The agreement by which 
the American agent. Jay, has just terminated the disputes between 
England and America ", wrote Grouvelle from Copenhagen to the 
Committee of Public Safety after the treaty became known there, 
"breaks absolutely this liaison" (i. e., a possible Scandinavian- 
American liaison).'^- The French design for another armed neu- 
trality quickly expired as the United States, under the guiding reason 
of Hamilton, acquiesced in the real facts of British sea power. 

Samuel Flagg Bemis. 

81 Grouvelle au Ministre (des Affaires Etrangeres), no. 50, Copenhagen, 27 
Messidor, an II. Arch. Aff. Etrang., Dannemarck, vol. 170, p. 232. 

82 Grouvelle aux Membres du Comite de Salut Public, Dechiffrement, Copen- 
hagen, 3 Nivose, an III. Ibid., p. 359. 



J 




■ I 



